


Epithet, Empathetically

by LiberaMeLuminis



Category: Akashi no Basuke | Akashi's Basketball
Genre: Character Study, Experimental, Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 06:11:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8390287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiberaMeLuminis/pseuds/LiberaMeLuminis
Summary: Emperor.





	

. .

 

 

When Akashi Seijuurou wakes up in the mornings, with only a few hours of sleep to his name, he stares up, at the ceiling, and calculates where he is – whether it be the luxurious chambers of his family mansion, or the dingy plaster of his dorm, or his former teammates’ homes, or his current teammates’ living quarters, or a sterile white hospital room, or a court. He blinks once, and then once more, and forces himself into a state of wakefulness, so as to not miss any crucial second.

It is not until he pads to the bathroom, his mind graciously empty, that he knows who he is in those very early moments of the day. He takes a good, long look, at the mirror, at the gaze that’s being reflected back at him, and notes the hue of its eyes.

The exchange only lasts for an instant. It hardly matters, anyway.

 

. .

 

At his mother’s wake, he stands, solemn, next to his father. Seijuurou is stoic – stone-faced, steely-eyed, fossilized under a basilisk’s glare. His eyes shift from his mother’s portrait, to study his father, who looks the most vulnerable that Seijuurou has ever seen him before – he is sickly pale, his forehead is slick with sweat, his breath hitches from pains in the chest and troubles of the heart. It seems, simply put, that he is about to cry at any given moment, but Seijuurou and Masaomi alike can feel the scrutiny of business partners and family members, all ready to pounce and go straight for the jugular at the sign of any weakness.

So, at his mother’s wake, ten-year-old Seijuurou stands, solemn, back straight, head held high, next to his father. In his peripheral vision, all lined up on wooden shelves, he sees rows and rows of black vases. They are at once both haphazardly hand-crafted, and meticulously mass-produced. Some hold burning incense, erected like gravestone markers in ashy sand, and the others are filled with warm water, and the petals of red and yellow azaleas. The fumes of medicinal smoke and the fragrance of flowers weld together, birthing a singular soothing scent that calms Seijuurou’s nerves, even when he knows that his mother is gone, even when he knows that his father is breaking down beside him.

The watchful eyes of his enemies lash at his back. He steadies his own on his mother’s graceful features, delicate like a doll, and whenever he takes a breath, the leftover shards of her porcelain skin dig deep, deep, deep into his lungs.

 

. .

 

Midorima Shintarou is merely nine years old, when he attains his fourth win at a regional piano competition, for children twelve and under. He had lost his first try, at the springy age of five, but since then, it had been smooth sailing, and he acquires his victories with ease. It gives him great pride, and he longs for it to stay that way forever.

He accepts his trophy in the spotlight, and waves his hands – the ones that some say are woven with magic. His lanky fingers grip tightly around the cold metal, and later, he will worry about the smudges on the formerly-clean surface, but for now, he is more than distracted.

It’s difficult to see through the bright shine of the theatre lights, and his clothes feel a bit stuffy in the heat. The faces of the crowd are all anonymous.

Except one.

The face shows up during his next practice, and is joined by red hair, and red eyes, and an indifferent expression. Shintarou realizes that the face belongs to a boy, and that the boy is the same age as him, even though he doesn’t seem it. The boy stands next to a man, who has the same red hair, and the same red eyes, and the same indifferent expression – but the man is most definitely not the same age as the boy, but it still almost seems as if they were two halves of one whole person. He looks away.

His piano instructor is frowning, her lips pressing into one straight line, and Shintarou is reminded of blank sheet music, because, for once, she’s silent, and has nothing to say. She puts her hand on Shintarou’s shoulder, and it pushes down with the force of a two-ton weight. He looks back.

He sees the man, in mid-nod. The boy moves forward. Shintarou blinks once, and then once more, and decides to close his eyes, just to listen to the _clack_ of the boy’s shoes, as it steps closer to the piano, closer and closer to him.

The weight begins to shake his shoulder. He jolts. The boy’s face peers down at him, with the same indifference, mixed with a hint of incredulity, and a dash of amusement. Shintarou stands up, and moves to the side, farther from the piano, and farther and farther from the boy, who lifts his hands, and places them tenderly on the worn ivory keys. The boy begins to play, and suddenly, Shintarou’s throat goes dry, petrified protests dying on his tongue.

 

. .

 

Seijuurou is entranced by the grand piano, which is erected in the middle of the sunroom, and never moves an inch, even though it has wheels. He cranes his neck, and leans in on the tips of his toes, trying to sneak a peek at the wonders that lay beneath the propped-up lid.

Warm arms reach around his middle, and lift him up. They belong to his mother, and he is finally offered the long-desired view of the inner-workings of the sunroom’s grand piano. One of the household maids wanders in on the scene, and is immediately endeared by the young master’s awe. She sweeps up her skirt, with no pretense of extravagance, and sits down on the bench, presses down on the pedals with her dainty feet, a few times, just to make sure, and opens up the fallboard to begin playing. It is a simple tune, almost crass, but the mother indulges her, and so does Seijuurou, who turns his head from the keys, to the pins, to the dampers, to the wires, to the keys, again. He doesn’t lose focus, even when his mother’s fingers seem to periodically squeeze and tremble.

In the evening, his mother finds him in the library, his little head stuck in a giant folio. He learns all the tiny parts of the piano, and how they all operate in unison to create beautiful music. He dissects the sunroom’s grand piano, and puts it back together again, in a day and a night. If a key sounds off, he can tune it himself, and it would work perfectly from then on. And when he finally plays, he can sense the patter of the hammers and the thrums of the strings between the black casing, and relaxes in his seat, because he knows how it works, and how to control it to his whims, and thus it is acceptable for it to exist.

 

. .

 

The man’s footsteps slice through the boy’s song, when he turns to leave. The door shuts, and immediately, the boy lifts his fingers off the keys, and lets them hover over the piano, as if stopping time. Shintarou takes a labored breath.

After practice, he finds the boy, again, kneeling a foot to the left of the door, an image of perfect Japanese etiquette. The shogi board, positioned in front of him, does little to disprove that idea. He blinks, and balances a piece between his middle and index fingers. The piece makes a resounding _clack_ when it is placed down, and to Shintarou, it is identical to the sound of his shoes.

“Do you play?”

Shintarou lies, and nods. It is about time, for a prim and proper boy like himself, to take up shogi. If not now, then in a month. If not in a month, then in a year. If not in a year, then in the future.

The boy’s lips quirk, and Shintarou anxiously wonders if he knows the truth of the matter.

He picks up a piece – “This is a pawn. It can only move forward, one step at a time.” – and sets it back down.

He picks up another – “And this is the king.”

 

. .

 

His dress shoes were shined with spit, but now, they’re caked with mud and dirt. The stables are tucked away in the far back of the estate, and Seijuurou runs toward them, runs with the energy of a madman. He outruns his mother’s shrine, he outruns his father’s grief, he outruns his own repulsive emotions. As he runs, he loosens his tie, and leaves it behind; he rips off his coat jacket, and leaves it behind; he kicks off his shoes, and punts them into the underbrush, then pulls off his socks, and throws them in the same direction, in hopes that the sharp stab of gravel and stone digging into the soles of his feet will distract him from his own bitter pathos.

He disregards the polished tack that hangs hooked on the walls, instead scooping up a handful of oat feed and grabbing a rope, heading directly for Yukimaru. The horse makes a slight sound, and Seijuurou unlocks the gate to allow him to eat, before knotting the rope to lead him out to open ground.

In minutes, they are running in tandem. Leftover leaves of the autumn diaspora litter the forest dirt, and when Seijuurou looks up, he sees that the black, claw-like tree branches criss-cross the sky, encaging him in his own little one-ride amusement park. Clutching Yukimaru’s snow-white mane tighter, he wishes that his life were just as spotless and bright.

. .

At Murasakibara Atsushi’s elementary school, there’s always been a red-haired boy who managed to stand out from the rest of the bumbling crowd that he easily towers over. At first, the boy catches his eye because his hair is the same hue as the Meiji logo, but then, Atsushi realizes how tall he seems to loom with his presence alone, and one day, he learns that that same presence stands even taller than him. Atsushi is always ostracized for his stature, after all, and the boy – Aka-chin – notices him because of it, but somehow, attention from Aka-chin doesn’t feel so bad.

By chance, they end up in the same homeroom for third grade, and that’s how they manage to achieve any semblance of closeness. They never talk much, but during lunch, Aka-chin sits next to him, against the teacher’s objections – which would gradually disappear over the year – to eat with him. He passes over bits of food, and Atsushi devours them all – even the vegetables.

This continues into the next year, and once the other children have gotten over the initial shock and awe, some start to pester them for it. Aka-chin shields Atsushi, and takes all the provocative insults, then glares, effectively chasing them away. A particularly persistent classmate never lets up, and in his enragement, Atsushi shoves Aka-chin to the side, and curls his crumb-laden fingers into a clammy fist. He almost punches the pest, but Aka-chin gives a little cough, and, using the distraction, it escapes. Atsushi wants to apologize, but he starts crying instead – because he accidentally hurt Aka-chin, and nothing came out of it, because he didn’t manage to exterminate the threat – and Aka-chin gives a genuine smile, and says he’s pleased that Atsushi wants to protect him.

So Atsushi sticks next to him, throughout lunch, for the rest of the year and halfway through the next, because out of all the things Aka-chin does for him, the best one was making him glad to be tall.

 

. .

 

Some things start becoming more apparent, over time, especially after Seijuurou starts reading books about shogi, and the fine art of observing your opponent, to know what moves they will make before even they do. Even so, his mother is not his opponent – she is his mother, and she is making food for her only child to give to his only friend for the long weekend, because these sort of things are the things that mothers do when their only child’s only friend is less well-off and loves to eat.

Seijuurou wonders if he’s gotten more perceptive, when he notices her mother’s frail hands, and how they twitch, even when she’s not holding anything. She grips a knife, and starts cutting white chocolate, but then her legs shake, and she moves them apart in order to stay steady, but then her hands fumble, and the knife slips, and the blood starts to coalesce on the sweets.

The cook, who is fortunately also in the kitchen, as per his job, begins to panic, and rushes to get disinfectant and gauze. But Seijuurou doesn’t concern himself with observing that – instead, he watches, fearful and confused, as his mother stares at her injury with blank eyes, then continues as if nothing had ever happened.

 

. .

 

“Checkmate.”

The basketball clubroom serves as the set-piece for their battle. Shintarou scowls, because, as always, Akashi has won. This fact will never change, as it has never changed in the past; and although with every game Shintarou improves at a startling rate, and although it is a widely regarded opinion that only those who lose will ever truly know how to amend themselves, it is useless, because one cannot amend perfection.

His offense is never overly aggressive, his defense never excessively cowardly. There are no cracks in Akashi’s strategies, and they all are the work of deep contemplation, masked under the guise of foolish spontaneity. This is by far the most terrifying aspect of his play, Shintarou thinks, because no matter how many times he’s held at gunpoint, he still gets lured back in. Perhaps, it is all willingly, and that too is a thought too hard to swallow.

He’d like to imagine, that even outside the blissful world of their imaginary wars, Akashi is just as flawless as his shogi. But this is not the case.

Captain Nijimura had resigned, in order to care for his ailing father, and Shintarou brings this up, before a match. Akashi scoffs, and calls it a fruitless effort – and, perhaps, that is when Shintarou first becomes disillusioned, because, of course, someone who seems able to change the tide of fate to suit their whims would never respect a decision such as their selfless captain’s.

 

. .

 

Seijuurou hands over the bento to Atsushi, who accepts it without any protest. He observes the unguarded grin that splits Atsushi’s face in two, and wonders how the gift could change the boy’s countenance to such an extent. The smile stays in his mind, for the rest of the evening, as in his imagination, all he sees is Atsushi sliding off the lid for the uppermost layer, and being greeted by a sheet of white – little bitty pieces, all liquefying into one amorphous blob – and a tiny red pickled plum in the center, which will explode in a fit of acidity, but whose taste will eventually disappear. Atsushi will ravage the layers, one by one, emptying out the innards of each organ, until, finally, he reaches the chocolate treats.

His mother brings down a butcher knife onto his neck, tearing through flesh and bone. She hacks through his ligaments, and detaches his cervical vertebrae, one by one. At this point, she will cut herself with the knife, and the blood will start to coalesce. The bones are tossed into a pot, and melted, until they become a viscous goo. The goo is spread onto a baking sheet, then chilled, then cut up into squares. It is inserted, delicately, into the very bottom of Atsushi’s bento, and Seijuurou knows that it is not a question of if Atsushi will be poisoned by him, but of when.

 

. .

 

The incense has all but burned out, when Seijuurou returns to the shrine. His father is kneeling, haphazardly, in front of his mother’s portrait, as if desperately bowing to a goddess who will soon fade from memory. His graying hair is akin to a dying flame, and if his father were an ignorant fool, he would sacrifice all his money and riches just to reunite with his late love. He is one of those things, but not the other.

Running two fingers over the dark circles, wallowing in his own fatigue, Seijuurou is sure that his father’s eyes are just as swollen as his own, with his skin sagging under the tears. He is unaccustomed with sharing emotions with his father, but right now, it feels as though they are both drowning, helpless against their own fatal mortality – the final enemy of which it is most imperative that they defeat, but the only one that they never will. If only they could come up for air, but there is no time to breathe.

 

. .

 

During their first year, Aomine Daiki gets fed up with his vice-captain nagging him, and acting like some damn mom, so he challenges him to a one-on-one. This is a bad idea, because he loses; but there’s a certain type of fiery talent found in Daiki, and whenever an even stronger flame burns it out, the passion within him only grows stronger. He challenges his vice-captain, Akashi Seijuurou, to another one-on-one, but this time it’s not for the sake of settling a score – because even though Akashi may be a shortie and an “instant-justice” kind of guy, he’s also damn good at basketball, and there’s no way Daiki’s going to let such a good fight slip out of his fingers.

He stops seeing Akashi as that annoying vice, and starts noticing that nobody else seems to have the same opinion that he did a little while ago, except for, perhaps, Haizaki. The girls who help out the team from time to time all idolize him for one reason or another, and everyone in the lower strings do the same, though more out of admiration than any sort of creepy romanticism. Captain Nijimura and Head Coach Shirogane respect him, because he doesn’t give them any troubles with his grades, and he’s an excellent tactician – or so Daiki’s heard. Even the otherwise unmanageable Midorima and Murasakibara go along with Akashi – for what reason, he doesn’t know.

It’s weird, because Akashi’s clearly got the entire school under his thumb, but whenever they’re on court together, Daiki feels like he’s the center of his attention. It’s kind of like getting berated by his teachers all at once, whether it’s about his stamina or his shooting or his footwork or his grades or his snide attitude or the little quips he sends back at Akashi when he’s just about to snap.

Sometimes, he does snap. He rockets a ball at Akashi, and the guy just steps to the side slightly and dodges, or, even worse, catches all of its brute force without faltering. It pisses Daiki off, and he feels about ready to explode, but then Akashi gives that small smile like the whole thing was planned right from the beginning, and he says, “First to five?” in a tone that makes it sound as if there’s a question mark tacked on the end for the sole purpose of keeping up the charade that Akashi somehow isn’t a mind-reading demon spawn.

And Daiki agrees to all of these matches. He loses all of them, and the frustration bubbles up inside of him and threatens to overflow, because no matter how tough his fighting spirit is, it’s his ego that isn’t resilient enough to keep up with counting all his failures. After a grueling practice, he stomps to the clubroom, fully intending to give Akashi the most brutal basketball beat-down of his life, and walks in, feeling stupid, on one of Akashi’s and Midorima’s nerdy shogi matches. Midorima’s spectacles almost fall off when he snaps up in surprise, while Akashi sets another piece down, in what probably is an advantageous position. Daiki stands, dumbly, as they continue, even with Midorima so obviously discomforted by his being there.

Midorima loses, and Daiki suspects the guy’s experiencing the exact same kind of utter defeat that he himself is always used to after Akashi scores five goals on him, because he kind of curls up into himself, like a shriveled up leaf. It is to this pathetic form that Akashi imparts a short lecture – “This is the same problem which plagues you on the court; you simply fail to perform as well when around other people. Work hard to overcome this, and you will succeed. Of that, I am sure.” – before moving to the door, upon which Daiki budges from his spot to give him greater access. Self-loathingly, Daiki wonders how he got roped into becoming one of Akashi’s lackeys, but then he hears the decisive words, “First to five?” and decides that such a thing can’t possibly be all that bad.

 

. .

 

His mother’s modest azalea garden flourishes next to a forest stream, of the clear, burbling variety. A decades, perhaps centuries-old Japanese maple blots out the burning heat of the sun, giving the flowers ample shade to multiply and thrive for years and years, even after his mother’s death. Seijuurou sits next to the stream, his shoes and socks placed next to his side, his feet dipped into the cooling water, a ripped page from a poetry collection creasing between his fingers.

“ _The sorrow of riverside blossoms inexplicable, and nowhere to complain._ ”

He lies down, and stretches his arms out above him, shaking out the wrinkles in the page. It glows when tiny spots of light hit it, its yellow pages turning to gold, like some of the azaleas that he sees extending out their petals in his peripheral vision. Red and gold: the color of love, the color of light, of blood and of greed, a duality of double meanings.

Logically, Seijuurou knows that he cannot possibly be held accountable for his mother’s death, but sometimes, his mind does not work under logic. This is one of those times – because the azaleas are in full bloom, and they smell so saccharine and sickly sweet, drugging him with the powerful force of reminiscence. Because when Seijuurou unlocks the future, he begins to lock up the past. This is a purposeful decision, because the past hurts – but it’s still there, inside of him, in his memories. It will never go away, and it’s with almost masochistic glee that he visits the azaleas to remind himself that even he can’t change history.

His head hurts. The sunlight is all too piercing and bright.

“ _I’ve gone half crazy._ ”

 

. .

 

If there is one thing that Kise Ryouta cannot copy to perfection, it is perfection itself.

He doesn’t want to fail Akashicchi. He doesn’t want to fail Aominecchi or Kurokocchi either, but the difference between those two and Akashicchi is that Akashicchi is something unreachable. Unattainable.

Does he ever want to touch that sort of perfection? That sort of once-in-a-lifetime, once-in-an-eon perfection that makes up Akashicchi? Does he want to corrupt it? Does he want to know that even it can be stained and dragged down to the level of mere mortals? Does he? Does he?

It’s hard to tell, but the answer, in the end, is no.

 

. .

 

There is a single encounter that Seijuurou can recall from his mother’s wake. It involves a man – tall, green-haired, with crooked glasses that regularly slide off his nose. The man, showing signs of discomfort, but with a steady resolve, taps Seijuurou on the shoulder. When he sees the man nervously wring his hands, he realizes it must be Shintarou’s father. The apple never falls far from the tree.

The man – Dr. Midorima – breaks the wake’s silence by quietly inquiring, “Forgive my insolence, but is your mother’s disease hereditary?”

This is where the memory ends.

Seijuurou thinks of it now, because Shintarou’s fingers have just frozen up, as if induced by catatonia. Shintarou takes a deep breath through his nose, which Seijuurou raises a brow at, then exhales loudly through his mouth. He slams the fallboard shut, the noise ringing through the sunroom. Seijuurou cannot see Shintarou’s face, but he is sure that its expression is most distressing.

“Is it hereditary?”

The irony makes him want to laugh. “You’ll have to elaborate.”

“Is your mother’s disease hereditary?”

“Yes.” He gives it a slight pause, to let the answer sink in. Shintarou’s back stiffens. “There is a 50% chance that the gene was passed down to me.” He rests his eyes on Shintarou’s whitened knuckles. “Does that scare you? After all, there are two of me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“A joke.” Seijuurou reaches over to straighten Shintarou’s glasses. “However, you mustn’t be frightened for me. I am perfectly capable of being frightened for myself, and yet, I am not. It will be alright.” He gently, but firmly, lifts up the fallboard, and Shintarou’s hands give way for the movement. “With confidence, now.”

 

. .

 

“Where does Akashi-kun get all his self-confidence from?”

Seijuurou smiles at Kuroko Tetsuya, and sturdily receives his pass, which would have otherwise swerved and missed its mark. He weighs the ball in his hands, and throws it up a couple times to catch, fully aware that Tetsuya is straining his ears to listen to his answer. It’s endearing.

“Should I not be confident in a constant? If I throw this ball, from this position, to the hoop, in a manner which I have done so many times before and succeeded at, will it not go in?” He can see Tetsuya frowning, in the corner of his eye.

“Maybe,” Tetsuya weakly protests, “but that is never certain.”

“And that is the core of the disparity between you and I. An outcome will not determine who is strongest; it is the strongest who determines the outcome.” Seijuurou shoots the ball, and he does not need to watch the hoop to know that it has reached his mark. The swish of the netting says enough on its own, the assuredness in his mind knows it to be true.

 **{** _click._ **}**

 **{** _01000100 01101001 01100100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101100 01101100 01111001 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01101011 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110101 01101100 01100100 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01110011 01101111 00100000 01100101 01100001 01110011 01111001 00111111_ **}**

 **[** _click._ **]**

 **[** _However, you do not know this to be true._ **]**

 **{** _01010100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01100010 01111001 00100000 01110000 01110101 01110100 01110100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110010 01100001 01101110 01100100 01101111 01101101 00100000 01110011 01110100 01110010 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01101110 01110101 01101101 01100010 01100101 01110010 01110011 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100100 01100101 01100011 01101111 01100100 01100101 01110010 00101100_ **}**

 **[** _However, you do not know this to be true, because, deep inside, you’re just as cowardly as your father._ **]**

 **{** _01111001 01101111 01110101 00100111 01100100 00100000 01100111 01100101 01110100 00100000 01110011 01101111 01101101 01100101 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01101110 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110011 01100011 01100001 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110010 01100101 01110011 01110000 01101111 01101110 01110011 01100101 00111111_ **}**

 **[** _However, you do not know this to be true, because, deep inside, you’re just as cowardly as your father, and just as weak as your mother._ **]**

 **{** _01001000 01100001 01101000 00101110_ **}**

 **[** _Do you remember her? Do you really remember her? With confidence, now, reach deep into your mind, reach deep into your memory._ **]**

 **{** _01011001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101001 01100100 01101001 01101111 01110100 01110011 00101110_ **}**

 **[** _Do you see her, that insane look in her eyes? Her disease? Her unrest?_ **]**

 **{** _01000001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01100110 00100000 01000001 01101011 01100001 01110011 01101000 01101001 00100000 01110111 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01110011 01101001 01101101 01110000 01101100 01100101 00101110_ **}**

 **[** _Do you truly think that she remembers you?_ **]**

 **[** _click._ **]**

 **{** _01000001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01100110 00100000 01100001 01101110 01111001 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110111 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01110011 01101001 01101101 01110000 01101100 01100101 00101110_ **}**

 **{** _click._ **}**

“However, you do not believe this to be true.”

Tetsuya nods, complacent.

“You do not need to. Have confidence in me, not yourself, for I am the one who chose you. Anything but, and it would be an insult towards me.”

“Sorry, Akashi-kun.”

“Do not be sorry. I trust in your ability to adapt. It is a human’s greatest strength, after all.”

 

. .

 

For the first time in weeks, his mother is lucid. She’s woken from her nightmares, she’s alive and breathing and grounded and here.

Seijuurou chokes out a sob, because her eyes are clear and bright, and when they focus on him he recognizes the faint pull of recognition that tugs at her mind, instead of the dull confusion, the steady sound of a morphine drip. He rushes up to meet her, because she cannot walk without assistance, and wraps his small arms around her. He doesn’t know what to say, because there’s too much to say, so he says the first thing that comes to mind.

“I don’t want you to die.”

_I don’t want you to die. I don’t want you to change. I don’t want you to change me. I don’t want you to leave me behind. Mother, mother, please don’t leave me behind. Please don’t abandon me. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to lose myself. I don’t want to be cowardly, and I don’t want to be weak, and I don’t want to hide, but please, just for now, let me hide in you._

It’s like meeting an old friend again, and when his mother comments on how long her hair as gotten since she last checked, he pulls away from her loose embrace and unlocks the cabinet on the opposite of the room. He grabs a pair of hair cutting shears, and, with his mother’s permission, trims her graying locks. He handles them as one would the finest of silks, and when he’s done, he gathers all the hair up into both hands, and stuffs it into his pocket.

The next day, his mother disappears once more. The next month, she’s gone.

 

. .

 

Every once in a while, Shintarou would resign himself to watching Akashi play shogi by himself, rather than participating. It’s a silent affair, and one devoid of any movement – the only discernable motion is that of Akashi’s eyes, gazing from side to side. He never lifts his hands, or budges in his seat, and this goes on for minutes on end.

Sometimes, he swears he can see one of his eyes shift colors. It must be the light.

And then, suddenly, it changes. Akashi brings up both hands, first the right, which moves a piece, then the left, which moves a piece, again and again, seamlessly, with rapid-fire speed, until the game ends, and one army is left the winner.

Shintarou doesn’t think he’ll ever comprehend how or why Akashi does these things that make his head hurt just to think about them, but, then again, no-one except Akashi ever probably will.

 

. .

 

“ _I don’t so love blossoms I want to die. I’m afraid, once they are gone, of old age still impetuous._ ”

The page has been crumpled up into a ball.

“ _And they scatter gladly, by the branchful. Let’s talk things over, little buds – open delicately, sparingly._ ”

Seijuurou lies on the corpses of a thousand dreams. He thinks of his mother’s gravestone, and how, tucked away, inside a little box, therein lies his mother, or at least part of her, burned up into ashes. Like a beach made of millions and billions of grains of sand.

But buried beneath him, his mother’s hair weaves itself into the soil. The soil is fertilized by the water, and on it, the azaleas grow. The maple tree continues to provide shade for the perennial flowers. The rain continues to fall. The earth continues to spin, making day become night and night become day. It is a perfect system. It is a perfect plan. His mother lives. She lives.

She does not.

Seijuurou sits up. His movement ends up shifting the muddy leaves beneath his feet. Surrounding him are the stumps of bushes and a single tree.

The azaleas died, long ago. Their petals had wilted, had been robbed of their lustrous hue. Red and gold. Red and gold. A duality of double meanings – but what meaning lies in that which does not exist?

He does not want to be cowardly, like his father. He does not want to be weak, like his mother. He does not want to hide. He does not want to die.

He crouches over the water’s edge. What does he see?

He does not want to see.

He closes his eyes.

 

.  .

 

“Seijuurou, dear, are you okay? You look pale, are you feeling well?”

He smiles, when his mother presses a warm hand to his cold, cold cheek. He leans closer to her bed.

“Yes, mother.”

His father crosses his arms, and huffs. “Of course he’s fine. He’s an Akashi.”

“And Akashi’s are always fine, are they not?” His mother’s lips curl up, cruelly.

“Yes, mother.”

 **[** _click._ **]**

 **[** _That’s right._ **]**

 **[** _Everything is fine._ **]**

 **[** _click._ **]**

“Your brother is right, dear. Take good care of him, for me, will you?”

“Yes, mother.”

Her teeth shine electric white. She lowers her hand from his cheek – already, he misses the warmth – and reaches under the covers, then presses a pair of hair cutting shears, and a fistful of her hair, to his chest. It burns an icy cold.

He snips his bangs. The leftover hair falls into his mother’s cupped hands. When he’s done, he peers down, into the blood that’s contained in interlocked fingers, and the dying colors mix together, until he can’t tell whose is whose.

“Will you?”

 

.         .

 

Atsushi shoots the ball, four times. They pass through the hoop, four times.

Four?

Death.

Losing is equal to death.

Seijuurou knows this to be true. This is the only thing which Seijuurou knows to be true – the swish of the netting, the assuredness of his mind, the fear, the panic, the cowardice, the weakness.

If one more point is lost, where will he go?

Discipline, courage, benevolence, sincerity – all were taken from him. Four points.

Death.

But wisdom is still there.

Losing is equal to death.

Seijuurou knows this to be true. He is wise. He will conquer.

Discipline, courage, benevolence, sincerity – all are not needed to form the perfect team. Four points, not needed.

He blots out the stares of his teammates, who all must be feeling as if their entire world is collapsing. They should know better – it already was, in the first place. He felt the cracks from the very beginning. He knew that such a congregation of talent could never last – and somehow, Daiki had, perhaps subconsciously, realized that Seijuurou knew this, and left of his own accord, before anybody could kick him out forcibly.

There is no use fixing something that is already broken.

So he stops trying.

He breaks.

 

.            .

 

“Seijuurou, dear, are you okay? You look pale, are you feeling well?”

The woman presses a warm hand to his cold, cold cheek. It’s slightly uncomfortable, and he wants to move away, but she seems oddly adamant.

 **[** _click._ **]**

 **[** _Yes._ **]**

His father crosses his arms, and huffs. “Of course he’s fine. He’s an Akashi.”

“And Akashi’s are always fine, are they not?” The woman’s lips curl up, cruelly.

He looks at his father, and frowns.

 **[** _…Yes._ **]**

 **“** _Yes. We have to be._ **”**

“Your brother is right, dear. Take good care of him, for me, will you?”

 **[** _…Do you think I can?_ **]**

Her teeth shine electric white. She lowers her hand from his cheek – he takes a quiet breath – and reaches under the covers, then presses a pair of hair cutting shears, and a fistful of her hair, to his chest. It makes his heart hurt.

He snips his bangs. The leftover hair falls into his mother’s cupped hands. When he’s done, he peers down, into the blood that’s contained in interlocked fingers, and when he sees a flash of gold amongst the red, he realizes he’s been staring into his reflection.

“You can. You are an Akashi, after all.”

 **[** _Yes. I am._ **]**

“█ ██████████████ ████

█ ██████████████

█ ███████████ █ ███████████████████ ████████ █████████

█ ████████████ ███████████████████████ █ █████████████████████████ ███████████████████

███████████████████████ █████████ ██████████████ ███████████████████. Isn’t that right, Seijuurou, dear?”

 

 

.                   .

 

 

 

 

**[R E D A C T E D]**

.                       .

 

 

 **[** _click._ **]**

 

 

.   .

 

 

 

**“ _ERROR: REQUIRED FILES ARE MISSING OR HAVE BEEN CORRUPTED._ ”**

.   .

 

The hot stadium lights.

They’re all too piercing and bright.

He looks down at his hands. His nails look chewed. He tries to move his fingers. It’s difficult, and it doesn’t work.

His legs quake. The world quakes. He moves them apart, in order to stand with stability. It’s difficult, and it doesn’t work. He topples.

He can’t move his fingers. He can’t move his hand. His arm flops, limply, lifelessly, flailing for help.

“Akashi-kun.”

Tetsuya reaches for his hand. When he touches it, it sizzles, and melts, under the hot stadium lights. Tetsuya watches, enraptured, as it turns into soup on the polished court floor. When all is said and done, Tetsuya is reaching for nothing.

The hot stadium lights.

He wonders if he’s in front of the gates of Heaven.

Tetsuya smiles.

“You failed.”

 

.  .

 

 **{** _click._ **}**

The moon casts its ethereal glow on the battlefield, unveiling the scores of corpses for the creatures of the pitch to see. Two flags intertwine, their shreds lying on top of each other, safe from the greedy clutches of the wind, if only for the heavy hand and its mud-stained nails, which had clawed at the cloths until death. It is a night made dark and decrepit, not by the fault of the sky or sun, but from the shameless spilling of blood, and the exposed intestines and organs, the cracked skulls and the ripped hearts that litter the once-beautiful meadow.

All is still, except for the forces of nature themselves, until a body shifts, and is heaved to the side. A man appears from under it, shielded by the camouflage that his comrade had provided, or simply by luck. His swords glint in the moonlight, and although his left eye is sealed shut by a cut to the lid, it can be safely assumed that he had paid back the attacker tenfold. Far away, his hair seems as if it is completely drenched in blood – however, a closer look will reveal that its natural appearance is that of the color red. It is the signature of the Empirical lineage – a testament to their superior warfare, which strikes terror into the hearts of many, and protects many more.

 **{** _01000010 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101100 01101100 01111001 00100000 01110011 01110101 01100011 01101000 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01101001 01100100 01100101 ?_ **}**

The red-haired scion trudges through the dingy slums of the city – an area so far removed from the highbrow affairs of the upper echelons that he almost feels disgusted just breathing in the air. Broken wires and scraps of machinery block the sidewalks, especially those of the alleyways, and with the leakage of the sewage system, he must be especially careful while navigating. Really, when – not if – he is elected to office – he’ll make sure that the impoverished areas will get renovations, or at least proper cleaning. He doesn’t know how the rest of his team have managed to survive, up until now, when the streets around them are in such a state.

He’d be hard-pressed to call his employees information brokers – that’s what they are, at least on paper, but really, they’re just a little six-man band of misfits: three idiotic slabs of muscle, one underground doctor, a reformed thief, and a woman – the only one in the group who really fits the job description. It’s a seedy business, but one that gives him a great advantage over the fools running against him. At least they’re competent enough when he’s there to boss them around.

 **{** _But 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101100 01101100 01111001 00100000 01110011 01110101 01100011 01101000 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01101001 01100100 01100101 01100001 ?_ **}**

The hands of his loyal disciples wrap the white sacrificial robes around him, delicately. The noise of the world around them are magnified hundredfold, and they could hear the sound of the meteors, and the blue flames, and all a manner of bombs, from corona to grimstone, swiftly destroying the hamlets that lay many leagues away from them. Soon, their town will be next – and the residential Seers would melted down until nothing but the inherent magic of their Sight was left. Specially, his. The power would be incredibly dangerous in someone else’s eyes – perhaps they would die, or do even worse.

His left eye glows a steady gold. All was going well, as per planned the night before, when he had received a Sight to offer himself to the God of Mercy. This is, as determined by both himself and his students, the only way to save their town. He’s never taken himself as a savior, but then again, fate works in mysterious ways, and sometimes he grew privy to its inner-workings too late to change it.

 **{** _But is 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101100 01101100 01111001 00100000 01110011 01110101 01100011 01101000 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01101001 01100100 01100101 01100001 ?_ **}**

Spirits are born out of nothing but air and mist and the occasional touch of human emotion – and gods are the same way. The foreseeing god is no exception – it does not remember its birth, it does not have a name, but it does not care for these facts in the first place. It is always looking for the future, as the past is a fickle matter, and easily lost.

It wanders the forest, observing the flowers – the ones which will wilt in the winter, and the ones which will prosper next year – and the trees – the ones to be chopped down, the ones to grow for centuries – and the soil and the water and the wind, but most importantly, the humans. That boy will freeze over with hypothermia, in the coming blizzard. That woman will fail to give birth, and that man will be struck with grief and guilt. That farmer’s crop will never give him the riches he so desires. That prostitute will never buy her freedom. That old man will die, before he can see his granddaughter’s bright eyes.

 **{** _But is that 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101100 01101100 01111001 00100000 01110011 01110101 01100011 01101000 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01101001 01100100 01100101 01100001 ?_ **}**

The last thing he remembers is dying. He didn’t realize it, until he hovered up from above his body, and saw that broken neck, and reached out to touch it, only to pass right through it. His life didn’t flash before his eyes – in fact, right now, he seems to only be losing his memories, slowly, steadily. The last thing he remembers is dying – the unknown man pushing him, forcibly, and with evil intent, and he falls, falls, falls onto the concrete step. A second later, he can’t even remember that.

 _Who is that?_ He thinks, when he sees the figure, laying on the concrete. He lifts the figure’s fingers, and wonders what they are, and he sifts through the hair, and wonders what the color of it is called, and why it makes him nostalgic, and how to describe that feeling. It’s a curious thing, not knowing anything, like a newborn child.

 **{** _But is that really 01110011 01110101 01100011 01101000 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01101001 01100100 01100101 01100001 ?_ **}**

A child prodigy. He’s labeled that from birth – it’s a heavy title, but one he carries with pride, nonetheless. He excels at everything: musical instruments, strategy games, school subjects. Other children are intimidated – as they have the right to be, for who wouldn’t be intimated by someone who managed to outclass most adults at such a young age?

 **“** _Are… are you mocking me?_ **”**

 **{** _But is that really such 01100001 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01101001 01100100 01100101 01100001 ?_ **}**

The child gains a friend, in his elementary school, and the friend isn’t scared of him. The friend is taller than him, but they are still equals – because the friend wants to protect him, and he wants to protect his friend. They only have each other, for the longest of times, until the child finds someone he can play piano and shogi with. Their duets and their duels excite him, in ways that nothing else will.

 **“** _Is this a biography? Some script for a biopic I was never informed of? A joke?_ **”**

 **{** _But is that really such a 01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01101001 01100100 01100101 01100001 ?_ **}**

Later, the child enters middle school, where he finds three more geniuses to take under his wing, as well as another child who is far from being one. They play basketball together, and they rule the court – as the child was trained, carefully, to do, for as long as he knew how to speak. It’s a daunting task, but somehow, they do it, together.

 **“** _Is that really how you see it? The work of fate? Do you think I’m that arrogant?_ **”**

 **{** _But is that really such a good 01101001 01100100 01100101 01100001 ?_ **}**

However, they do not stay together for too long.

 **“** _…Stop._ **”**

Perhaps, the child grew up too fast.

 **“** _…Stop. Please. Stop dictating my life for me. Stop doing this to me._ **”**

 **{** _But is that really such a good idea?_ **}**

The prodigy enters high school, where he becomes a tyrant. In class, he scores perfectly, and on the court, he plays perfectly, but after the day is all accounted before, he locks himself in his dorm room, wishing it weren’t so silent.

 **“** _…_ **”**

Perhaps the prodigy knew that his team would fall apart. Perhaps he wished it would. Perhaps, then, he would have an excuse.

 **“** _Do you want me to admit to it?_ **”**

 **{** _But is that really such a good idea?_ **}**

The tallest finds him first, as he did him.

A chair is kicked off to the side.

His feet hang, in the air. He is dancing. The light of the gray winter sky fills the room, bathing him in white.

He cannot feel the pain of his broken neck.

The dead can’t remember such things.

 **{** _But is that really such a good idea?_ **}**

 **{** _click._ **}**

 

. .

 

“Sei-chan? Sei-chan, are you okay? You look pale, are you okay?”

Someone’s arms are shaking him. He looks up, and doesn’t recognize the face. A teammate? A stranger?

“Leave him alone,” someone else mutters, behind him. “Just another case of the arrogant underclassman getting a taste of his own medicine.”

“Don’t be mean, Mayuzumi! Captain’s gotta be alright!”

A gruff voice makes a grunt of agreement. Or, at least, that’s what he thinks.

“You’re all too dismissive; he’s our captain. It’s our job, as his teammates, and upperclassmen, to take care of him.”

“You can’t do anything about someone who’s crazy, Mibuchi. Even you’re not a therapist.”

“Reo-nee could be one, if he needed to be.”

A grunt. “Yeah, I bet he could.”

“Nevermind that – Sei-chan, we need to bow!”

“Forget it, he’s not listening.”

He is listening. Listening too much, perhaps, because he can hear the hot stadium lights, ringing in his ears, and they hurt, and annoy him, like the incessant buzzing of insects.

“Come on, Captain, you can do it!”

“Stop making such a big deal out of this. It’s just a bow.”

“You’re not helping, Mayuzumi.”

“As if. Tch. Akashi, you didn’t fucking die. It’s just a game. Stop moping.”

The strangers disappear.

He’s left, alone, under the hot stadium lights. They burn like little needles in his skin. He wants to scream in anguish, “Who am I? Who is Akashi Seijuurou?”

He doesn’t.

 

. .

 

“Sei-chan, are you okay? You look pale.”

Seijuurou smiles at Mibuchi Reo, who, as he’s come to understand in the past few minutes, is the one his little brother chose to be his vice captain. “I’m alright; you needn’t worry. Let’s bow,” he announces, facing the other three – Hayama Kotarou, Nebuya Eikichi, and Mayuzumi Chihiro – of his starters. “You all did exceptionally well.”

 

. .

 

Atsushi finds him first, as he did him.

Seijuurou can see him, a giant in the crowd, while he bows beneath the hot stadium lights, and accepts the Second Place award dutifully. He can’t quite place the boy’s expression – but then, he notices how tall Atsushi’s grown since he’s last seen him (on the court, with a 4-0 score against him) and grows prideful at how he was the one to first introduce such an idiot savant to basketball.

When Atsushi forces his way down to him, and awkwardly bends halfway his height in order to hug him properly, Seijuurou learns just how tall he is, and silently wishes that they were on the same team again.

Atsushi is crying, as he’s done a few times before, back in the early years of elementary, but this time, it’s bittersweet. To Seijuurou, the last year had passed by in an instant – he knows what happened, yes, but it all feels as though he should still be in Teiko. He can only imagine how hard it must have been for Atsushi, who had to experience every excruciating moment. It certainly seems to have taken its toll on him.

“I – I thought I killed you, Aka-chin, I thought you d-died…” He breaks out into tears, again, and his hug tightens even more.

“Akashi-kun is always Akashi-kun.”

He peeks through Atsushi’s arms, but doesn’t make a move to pry his fingers off from around him. “Kuroko,” he greets. “Congratulations.”

“Congratulations to you as well, Akashi-kun.”

Seijuurou lifts a brow at that. “What for?”

Tetsuya blinks, then frowns, caught off guard. “Well, um, I’m not really sure.”

 

. .

 

“Akashicchi’s back.”

Ryouta peers at Daiki, expectantly, until the latter lets out an exasperated sigh.

“He never left to begin with. Everyone says he did, but they’re all wrong.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

All in all, Daiki’s not sure he can explain it at all – not with the eloquence of Akashi himself, or in simple terms, like Tetsu can. In the third year, when everything started falling apart – even before the ‘change,’ – it still felt as though everything were under Akashi’s control.

Now, it doesn’t seem that way. Now, it seems as if Akashi tried to keep everyone together, but couldn’t. But Daiki has the slightest of suspicions that even that was part of his captain’s stupid ulterior motives.

He remembers now, that day, when he walked in on Akashi and Midorima’s shogi match. Midorima was definitely playing worse than he would have, because Daiki was standing there – like an idiot, Kise would say – but so was Akashi. Why would he? There was a point in the game, where Midorima had cornered Akashi, somehow – and then, suddenly, Akashi bounced back, in full force, and won. As if he liked losing control, and regaining it.

Maybe winning was just a formality.

When Akashi was bowing, with the rest of his team, it almost looked as if he was relieved he lost.

Daiki shakes his head. “It’s nothing.”

 

. .

_Thus, we may know that there are five essentials for victory:_

_He who will win knows when to fight and when not to fight._

_He who will win knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces._

_He who will win has an army animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks._

_He who will win, having prepared himself, waits to attack the unprepared enemy._

_He who will win has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign._

. .

 

Akashi Seijuurou is the pride and joy of Rakuzan High.

President of the student council, captain of the basketball team, and already well on his way to becoming a professional shogi player, Akashi Seijuurou never loses, always wins, and, as a result, is beloved by many, envied by few, and hated by none. He is a perfect existence.

…Is that really so easy to believe?

 

. .

 

Shintarou loses at his shogi rematch with Akashi, and they shake hands afterwards. Theirs is a relationship born of mutual respect, and that is all there is to it.

However, nothing is ever that simple.

“Familial Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.”

It gives Akashi pause.

“Am I not correct?”

 

. .

 

The truth is, Seijuurou does remember, as much as he tries to forget.

He remembers his kind, perfect mother, screaming at things that weren’t there, and clawing at his father until she drew blood. He remembers her inhuman way of walking – if it could even be called that – and how she lurched and jerked, feet apart, with every step. How her face scrunched up, all the time, as if she were constantly in pain, and then grew slack on one side, then the other. Her fingers, and how they twitched – pointer, ring, middle, pointer, ring. She never said “Seijuurou, dear,” because she couldn’t pronounce the syllables correctly, and it was always difficult to understand what she was saying at any given moment, or even if she had intended to speak at all. He knows how she turned from a compassionate lady to the cold, unresponsive, old woman in the sterile hospital room, and how he never was sure, in the end, which one of her was his real mother.

He remembers her as an angel, and her as a depraved monster, and he wonders if it were the fault of his growing up that he began to see her that way. Perhaps she was like that the entire time, and he’d only just noticed. He wishes he didn’t.

His mother’s azalea garden is gone, now. Even the stumps are uprooted. Did the flowers ever leave? Or did they simply move inside of him – are they growing, in his mind, sliding their sickly sweet honey between his cells, and spreading their leaves to feast on the brightness of his brain? Are they eating at him, day by day, hour by hour, every second to the next?

When his younger brother appeared, he truly wanted to break open his own skull, and rip through his hippocampus, so that he couldn’t recall a single detail of his life. Ignorance is bliss, after all.

Seijuurou’s greatest fault lies in the woeful fact that he will never be able to forget his mother. It’s almost cruel, just how easily she poisoned him.

 

. .

_Hence the saying:_

_If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles._

_If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat._

_If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle._

. .

 

“I’ve lost to you, Kuroko.”

The hallway wall suddenly feels very cold against Tetsuya’s back. He’s sitting next to his captain – his former captain. He never imagined having a conversation with him, ever again. Especially not after what he did.

“Are you going to stop playing basketball, now, Akashi-kun?”

Akashi-kun runs his hands down the ball in his hands, and Tetsuya catches a glimpse of the hardened calluses that have formed on the pads of his fingers – the result of years of grueling practice.

“Do you really see me as that weak?”

Tetsuya swallows. “No. Never.”

“Hm.” A smile. “Well, to answer your question, I was hoping I could stop, after today. I was planning on losing, you see. I had a note written, to give to you and the others, and I would leave you all with that.”

Against his better judgment, Tetsuya frowns.

“I’d always wanted this chance to erase everything I had done. But it simply isn’t a realistic expectation – especially not for myself. All my life, I’ve wished to lose.”

“How does it feel?”

“Quite awful.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for your strength, Kuroko. It’s an insult.”

They sit, in contemplative silence, for a while. At least, that is what Tetsuya imagines it must be for Akashi-kun. It is just silence, on his own end.

“Do you remember what I told you, all those years ago?”

“Akashi-kun told me a lot of things.” Tetsuya respects that about Akashi-kun. He always listened in awe, whenever Akashi-kun revealed his seemingly endless pool of insight about the human condition, from what seemed to be an outsider’s perspective.

“The strongest determines the outcome. _Thus, it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory._ Kuroko, do you see me as weak?”

Tetsuya shakes his head.

“Ah. And that is the core of the disparity between you and I. I am very weak, Kuroko. My most deep, deprived desire is to change – and yet, I am not strong enough to do so.” He pauses, and turns his head, to look at Tetsuya straight in the eye. “Tell me, Kuroko, what is a human’s greatest strength?”

He will not allow an incorrect answer. “The ability to adapt.”

Akashi-kun nods. “It is that very ability to adapt which I lack. No matter how you see it, Kuroko, I have always been weaker than you. Do you find this hard to believe?”

Tetsuya looks away from the two glimmering rubies that are staring him down, and wishes that one of them were gold. “I find it impossible to believe, Akashi-kun.”

A sigh. “You say this, yet you have proven this fact with your own actions.” He stands – Tetsuya can see the movement, in this peripheral vision. “You’re incredibly contradictory. Perhaps that is why you have put up with me for so long.”

Tetsuya wants to say that Akashi-kun is the same, and then some – he is made up of contradictions, he breathes and lives in them. It would take far too long to list them all.

So he doesn’t. Akashi-kun walks away, with the last word.

 

. .

_There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard._

_There are not more than five primary colors, yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever be seen._

_There are not more than five cardinal tastes, yet combinations of them yield more flavors than can ever be tasted._

. .

 

While Seijuurou would rather work on his student council duties in the silence of the president’s office, he does get the slightest feeling – from the few specific memories he has from the previous year – that his little brother has grown attached to the Rakuzan starters, and that the Rakuzan starters, likewise, have grown attached to him. How they did so is anyone’s guess – he’s well aware of his brother’s complete lack of emotional intelligence – but nevertheless, the sentiment is there, so he does his work while sitting next to the others during lunch, even though his food has still not been touched out of politeness.

“Captain, aren’t you ambidextrous?” Hayama pushes his head in front of the undoubtedly important forms that Seijuurou is in the middle of filling out. Seijuurou hadn’t been listening to their conversation, but, evidently, its topic had eventually gravitated towards him.

He doesn’t answer, anyway. Nebuya stops stuffing his face with hamburg steak, for just a second, to bemusedly remark, “He is? Really?”

“He is. You’re an autodidact, aren’t you, Sei-chan?” Mibuchi smiles, sweetly, from his seat, and Seijuurou pauses to look at him and see the stars in his eyes that always appear whenever he boasts about him.

“Autodidact?” Nebuya’s face scrunches up. “Whatever. Does that mean he could beat me in a left-handed arm wrestle?”

Hayama cackles. “What, you looking for redemption?” In response, Nebuya’s face scrunches up even more. “But Reo-nee, I think it’d be cooler if he were born ambidextrous. Wouldn’t that be awesome?”

“Mm.” He weighs his options. “Yes, but training your left hand to be as good as your right is much more impressive, in terms of determination and willpower. It’s a commendable feat.”

“What do they call this kind of argument again? Something versus something? Captain, do you know?”

The table falls silent. Seijuurou sets his pen down, then reaches over with his left hand to take up a pair of chopsticks. He picks up pieces of vegetables, and sets them on Hayama’s and Nebuya’s plates. “Kotarou. Eikichi.” The names are strange on his tongue, but he’s found that his three teammates prefer it that way. “Try to eat with your health in mind.” The threat of double practice goes unsaid.

 

. .

 

To Mayuzumi Chihiro, there are two statements that really sum up the entirety of his third year at Rakuzan, with the first said by Mibuchi, as some praise-laden gloat, and the second by Akashi, as an offhand comment.

“For Sei-chan, winning is the same thing as breathing.”

“Losing, in general, is the same as dying.”

This is unfortunate, he thinks, when Rakuzan – when Akashi – loses the Winter Cup by one point to some backwater newbie team. But Akashi is fine, nevertheless. It’s weird. It shouldn’t be possible. People don’t just survive fatal suffocation.

Well, maybe the metaphors are getting to him. Maybe it’s finally being proven that all those trashy light novels that he reads aren’t real – but he already knew that in the first place, so what’s the point? Maybe it’s to prove that Akashi is the one who’s real.

Because Akashi certainly doesn’t ever feel real. Yeah, on the first day of practice, he slammed open the doors to the Rakuzan basketball gym and declared himself captain, and Mibuchi and everyone else became so instantly enamored that they just let him be. His presence hit everybody like a sixteen-wheeler speeding down the highway. He’s respected and feared and loved school-wide – but at the same time, nobody asks for opinion on the matter, because everybody just assumes that he likes that careful balance between deference and terror and whatever you call the hundreds of chocolates he gets on Valentines.

He’s there, and he isn’t. Something alive, but not living. This permanent parasite that will always dwell in Chihiro’s mind, he’s sure, for the rest of his life, but at the same time someone so transient and fleeting that it’s hard to believe he even exists.

This is unfortunate, Chihiro thinks, when he eyes all the new trashy light novels that are littered around his newly trashed college dorm. The red-haired or heterochromatic-eyed girls stare back at him, with lewd expressions, or pissed ones, or melancholic ones, or just straight-up happy ones. He thinks of how Akashi never managed to show this much emotion, for all the time he knew him. He thinks of Akashi as being some all-powerful beautiful girl character in one of his new trashy light novels, the one who wins all the popularity polls, and has enormous amounts of porn written and drawn for her that’s posted by stupid closet exhibitionists for all the world to see. It’s deplorable. It’s disgusting.

He admits to himself that he would read that porn, if it existed. He’s deplorable. He’s disgusting.

Well, it’s probably better that way, for Akashi to just stay as that unreachable ideal of perfection. Believing in that will preserve Chihiro’s sanity longer than coming to terms with Akashi’s humanity ever will. Unfortunately.

 

. .

_In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack – the direct and the indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers._

_The direct and the indirect lead on to each other in turn. It is like moving in a circle – you can never come to an end. Who can exhaust the possibilities of their combination?_

..

 

A picture frame lies flat on the nightstand. The walls that surround him are an eerie white that matches the drapes and the linoleum floor. He stares at the tiles that make up the ground beneath his bed, until the thin borders between each square fade away, creating a blank slate. It’s quite sad, in a way that makes him curious, and longing for more.

The door clicks. Inside, walks a man, who he knows is his father, who, for all intents and purposes, should not be alive. This man was found, hanging from the giant Japanese maple tree – the one that digs its roots deep into the dying remnants of azaleas, and a dead remnant of his wife.

Following the man, is a boy, perhaps only sixteen, who he knows is himself.

A picture frame lies flat on the nightstand. It holds the portrait of the boy’s mother – of his mother.

“Seijuurou,” the man heaves, wearily. “Seijuurou, my son.”

 _Yes_ , he thinks. _Yes, I am your son._ He laughs, not out-loud. _The apple never falls far from the tree, does it not?_

“You are dying.”

_Yes, I am dying._

The man begins to cry.

“I’m sorry, you just… you look so much like your mother.”

He wishes he didn’t.

“She was beautiful, you know. You were, too. After she died… I couldn’t bear to look at you. You always reminded me of her.”

He smiles, wistfully, regretfully.

 _And now I am her_ , he thinks, spitefully. _I’ve gone insane. Out of all people, why him?_

A picture frame lies flat on the nightstand. The man is probably wondering, at this moment, who sits in the frame. He probably hopes for it to be his wife. He probably wants to lift the frame up, and see her dainty figure once more, her curling smile.

“I’m a dead man, now.”

_And I’m an old one._

“You’ve grown up to be a fine person.”

_Doesn’t that make you feel worse?_

“There were so many possibilities ahead of you…”

_Yes. There were._

“I understand if you hate me.”

_Yes. I do._

“I understand if you hate us, for wanting you to be born. We could have compromised. We could have used someone else. There’s so many out there.”

_Don’t feel pity for me. It’s an insult._

“I’m sorry.”

The man wipes his tears on his sleeves.

“I’m sorry I was a coward. I’m sorry I left you. Twice.”

_Will you leave me again?_

The man disappears.

A picture frame lies flat on the nightstand. It does not disappear.

“Did we ever miss him?”

This time, the boy speaks.

_I don’t think I could ever admit to that._

“Neither could I, if it comes to happen to me.”

They are silent, for a while.

“What was that thing we always said, before?”

_Those who know the future can change it._

“That one.” He hums. “Do you think I can change this?”

_I think you could if you tried._

“Ah, yes. It is the strongest who decides the outcome, is it not?”

The boy laughs.

“Did we want this?”

_I think, for a time, I did._

“Did they want this?”

_Most definitely not._

“Would she?”

They are silent, once more. The boy walks up to the nightstand, and flips up the frame. Inside, there is a portrait of a child, who is perhaps only ten. Black vases are lined up behind him.

“Ah.”

_Ah._

“Do you think anyone will notice, if I change things?”

_No._

“Do you think anyone will care, if I change things?”

_No._

“Will we, at least, be happy?”

_I think we could if you wanted to be._

“We will be, then.”

The blank whiteness melts away, into the hot stadium lights.

The boy is flanked by his former teammates, who unconditionally trust him to lead them to victory, even against this greater force.

He smiles, because he knows that later tonight, when he’s ready to fall into the realm of dreams, he will view his own image in the bathroom mirror. He will take a good, long look at the gaze that’s being reflected back at him, and will note the hue of its eyes.

The exchange will only last for an instant. It won’t matter, anymore.

 

 

**.**

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

>  **{** _click._ **} {** A comprehensive list of inspirations and influences: <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EZwKsEf0Vh0ToEhVLZFqgpSDUqTPwXEDUBBWHc92rtQ/edit?usp=sharing> **} {** _click._ **}**


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